"The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity," said NASA scientist Richard Fisher in a release . "At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. The intersection of these two issues is what we're getting together to discuss."

The National Academy of Sciences released a report two years ago entitled "Severe Space Weather Events – Societal and Economic Impacts." It warned that a solar activity storm could "could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina."

Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity.

There is hope, NASA said, putting satellites in 'safe mode' and disconnecting transformers can protect them from damaging electrical surges. Also NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo. would have the job of predicting solar activity in time that the nation could prepare.

A huge solar flare caused a geomagnetic storm on September 1-2, 1859 that swept over Earth. NASA Science News reported that within hours, telegraph wires in both the United States and Europe spontaneously shorted out, causing numerous fires, while the Northern Lights, solar-induced phenomena more closely associated with regions near Earth's North Pole, were documented as far south as Rome, Havana and Hawaii, with similar effects at the South Pole.

Scientists are preparing for the modern day equivalent of such a cycle as the sun's solar cycle is expected to peek at about the same level in May 2013 as it did in 1859.

NPR reported that government officials said such a storm could leave millions of people without electricity, running water or phone service. That was the conclusion after taking part in a tabletop exercise that looked at what might happen today if the Earth would see such a storm.

Solar storms occur when an eruption or explosion on the sun's surface sends radiation or electrically charged particles toward the Earth. Minor storms can interfere with radio signals. A large one can release as much energy as a billion hydrogen bombs, according to the NPR repport.

As far as what ordinary people should do? Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said to NPR that the standard emergency kit containing food, water and first aid supplies should work fine.

When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America , you get a front row seat. - George Carlin

The Sun is a continuous Nuclear reaction. It spits off mass into space and burns it off everyday. I wonder how much less the Sun's mass reduces each day? Thus, reducing its gravitational force upon the Earth. This in turn lets us slip a bit farther out in our rotation with longer travel each year.

Will the density of the Sun reduce to a point where by it may someday encompass and burn the inner circling planets? They say that could happen many years in the future?

The sun is so huge that the amount of mass it loses is not an issue with orbital travel. It would take millions of years for the earth's orbit to change appreciably.

What will happen, several billion years into the future is that our sun will most likely become a red dwarf and engulf the earth. That's when the real SHTF will happen

Or, maybe sooner!

The future of the planet is closely tied to that of the Sun. As a result of the steady accumulation of helium at the Sun's core, the star's total luminosity will slowly increase. The luminosity of the Sun will grow by 10% over the next 1.1 Gyr (1.1 billion years) and by 40% over the next 3.5 Gyr.[49] Climate models indicate that the rise in radiation reaching the Earth is likely to have dire consequences, including the loss of the planet's oceans.[50]

The Earth's increasing surface temperature will accelerate the inorganic CO2 cycle, reducing its concentration to levels lethally low for plants (10 ppm for C4 photosynthesis) in approximately 500 million[19] to 900 million years. The lack of vegetation will result in the loss of oxygen in the atmosphere, so animal life will become extinct within several million more years.[51] After another billion years all surface water will have disappeared[21] and the mean global temperature will reach 70 °C[51](158 °F). The Earth is expected to be effectively habitable for about another 500 million years from that point,